The East Market District, colloquially referred to as NuLu (a portmanteau of "New" and "Louisville"),[1][2] is an unofficial district of Louisville, Kentucky, situated along Market Street between downtown to the west and the Highlands neighborhoods to the east. A growing, hip district, the area comprises parts of two of Louisville's oldest neighborhoods, Butchertown and Phoenix Hill. The district is home to schools, churches, large and small businesses and some of the city's oldest homes and businesses. A destination since Louisville's founding, Market Street has played host to a variety of businesses throughout the city's history that have drawn Louisvillians for generations to its addresses.

What may be called the flagship building of NuLu is The Green Building. It was originally built in 1891 by Sternau's Dry Goods and was used as a dry goods store until it closed in 1949. It has since been used as a Goodwill Thrift Store (1956–1977) and a photography warehouse (1977–2006). In 2006, Gill and Augusta Holland purchased the building and began a dramatic renovation to try to achieve LEED Platinum Certification. The Green Building earned LEED Platinum Certification in 2010, becoming Louisville's first commercial LEED Platinum structure and Kentucky's first LEED Platinum adaptive reuse structure. Holland coined the term NuLu.

Louisville's East Market District is now best known for its galleries showcasing local, regional and national artists, unique specialty stores, antique shops and a growing number of upscale restaurants. While multiple art galleries are located in Louisville, they are especially concentrated in this area east of downtown.

The galleries in the West Main District, as well as some area galleries and businesses, are prominently featured during the monthly First Friday Trolley Hop, where free trollies circle the downtown district with stops at most galleries and museums along its route.[3]

The NuLu East Market Festival is an annual event designed to showcase what the neighborhood and city of Louisville have to offer. Originally held September 26, 2009, the festival featured local vendors, food booths, beer and wine sales and a musical lineup featuring Ben Sollee.

The area that is now NuLu was originally part of a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) Royal land grant to Col. William Preston for his service during the French and Indian War. In 1827, the area was annexed by the city of Louisville under the name of "Uptown". Around 1832, Market Street's eastern terminus was occupied by the Woodland Gardens, a green oasis of amusement and entertainment in the growing city that became a favorite gathering spot with German immigrants. The gardens themselves gave way to the Bourbon Stockyards when it closed in 1880, which helped fuel early growth of meat purveyors, tanners and other industries associated with the livestock trade, including the establishment of five Market Houses that populated the street. Two of these could be found in today's East Market District: the Shelby Market, between Campbell and Shelby Streets, and the Preston Market between Preston and Floyd Streets. From the early 1960s until the early 2000s the East Market area was occupied by many of Louisville's homeless people and the Wayside Mission was a prominent feature. Eventually businesses in the area, headed by antiques dealer Joe Ley, pressured the city to crack down on homelessness and vagrancy. This paved the way for the gentrification of the area and early investors bought properties for renovation. The homeless were forced to move south of the area now concentrating on East Broadway.

The Haymarket area, which occupied most of the blocks around Jefferson, Market, Floyd and Preston streets, had a long and ethnically rich history, says University of Louisville archivist Dr. Tom Owen. "Dating as far back as the late 1800s an open-air market was operated here by vendors of varied national heritage," he says. "At that time the Haymarket extended from Preston Street to Second Street and was the center for the majority of the produce traded in the city." The first blow to the Haymarket's produce-market predominance came in 1955, when several fruit vendors and produce companies, including Horton Fruit, Al Campisano Fruit, and the Hill and Sloan, S&S, and Clarence Mayfield produce companies formed the Louisville Produce Association and moved from East Liberty Street to Bishops Lane. The original Haymarket buildings were demolished in the late 1950s as part of an urban renewal initiative, but a new Haymarket was constructed in the 1960s and expanded several times over the next two decades.

The creator of New York City's Central Park and father of Louisville's original parks system, Frederick Law Olmsted, designed two parks that replaced the original Market Houses, with the mini-parks themselves later replaced by traffic lanes.

Designated in 1983 as part of the Phoenix Hill National Register Historic District, the area has a rich blend of architectural styles, ranging from pre-Civil Warfederal style town-homes and shotgun houses, to Italianate and Victorian residential and commercial structures, as well as large pre and turn of the 20th century buildings built to house Louisville's thriving businesses during the boom following the Civil War. Many of these buildings are today home to the many galleries, shops, restaurants and residents in the district. This includes Louisville's first commercial building seeking national LEED platinum certification as a green structure, known as The Green Building, located in a 110-year-old former dry goods store.